


a photo of a ghost

by AlysanneBlackwood



Series: Holidays [2]
Category: American Horror Story, American Horror Story: Hotel, American Horror Story: Murder House
Genre: Angst, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, But seriously what did you expect these two are always crying, Crying, Gen, Grunge ghosts, JUST GIVE SARAH PAULSON AND EVAN PETERS EMMYS ALREADY, Tate and Sally are massive trolls
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-11 10:18:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16473683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlysanneBlackwood/pseuds/AlysanneBlackwood
Summary: On Halloween, two lonely, regretful souls meet in Los Angeles.The title is from Dave Malloy's song cycle "Ghost Quartet."Happy Halloween!





	a photo of a ghost

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. (Spoilers for "Return to Murder House") This was begun before “Return to Murder House” aired, which I think takes place in 2016 or 2017 (since the flashback starts three years before the bombs, which drop in 2019). I initially intended this to take place in the canon verse of Murder House and Hotel, but, since Violet took Tate back at the end of the aforementioned episode, this is now rendered an AU where she does not. (Unless they break up between that episode and Halloween this year, but I don’t know about that.)  
> 2\. I remembered that bit in Hotel where Sally catches Scarlett and all her teeth fall out; I'm not sure if this is some kind of power of illusion or if the ghosts can actually do this to themselves and then regenerate to normal condition, but it makes for good scares, so I decided to use it.  
> 3\. Happy Halloween! Please enjoy this fic about two ghosts getting drunk and crying, because that's really scary. If you don't, go read something else and have a spooktacular day.

_ 31 October 2018 _

Being out here among people feels alien, and she hates that feeling.  It should be normal. Everyday. Mundane, boring, even.

But instead she’s stuck in that fucking hotel three-hundred-sixty-four days of the year, her only contact to the outside being her phone.  And hell, it’s good to chat with people online, but it’s not real human contact. It’s not watching someone’s lips as they talk, or hearing their words in your ears, or feeling their hand in yours.  It’s reaching out and grasping at air. It’s realizing that no matter how much people talk to you, you’ll never be able to touch them. And that fucking blows.

So here she is, outside some hole-in-the-wall bar, afraid of what will happen if she goes in.  Sure, she could fuck someone, but once they find out about her, they’ll leave. They always do.  Like John did. Even now that he’s dead he won’t touch her or speak to her. He disappears when he sees her coming.  All she needs a chance to talk with him, to set things right, but he won’t give her that. The dead don’t get second chances.  The dead stay as they are, stagnant, stuck, desperate, wanting. Wanting for new life, wanting for a peaceful afterlife. Wanting for change, change to themselves, but they can’t.  She’s still the same lonely, addicted, depressed Sally she was in 1994, no matter how many people follow her on Twitter. 

“Are you gonna move?” someone asks behind her, and she whirls, about to tell him to fuck off, but his face stops her short.

He’s young and dark-eyed, his blonde hair falling into his face.  She knows that face.  _ “How much?”  _ he’d asked, his eyes nervous, shifting from side to side.   _ “For a bag of crystal.” _

_ “You’re new,”  _ she’d said, looking him up and down.  He’d shoved his hands in his pockets and glared at the ground.

_ “Stop staring and give me the fucking cost.  I have money.”  _ She’d known she could up the price then, if she wanted.

_ “Fifty.  You got fifty?”   _ He’d shoved the money into her hands and taken the bag before she could say anything else.  She’d watched him go, and shrugged off the strangeness. Sad little rich kid with nothing better to do than get high, probably.

He’d shot up that school the next day.  It was all over the news. She had been as indifferent as she could, though a small part of her wondered if her speed had had anything to do with it.  No, she’d decided. Psychos were psychos, with or without drugs.

“Back for more?” she asks, and he cracks a sad smile.

“You remember.”

“I’ve got nothing to do but remember.  What about you? They got you at that big place on Westchester?  Didn’t know it had ghosts.”

“I’m stuck there,” Tate says.  “Halloween’s the only night I get out.”

“You don’t have to explain,” Sally says.  “I’m stuck too. The Cortez.”

“How?”

“Bitch of a manager pushed me out the window the week after you.  You should have visited.”

“I don’t keep up with the news.  Now are you going in or not? I need a drink.”

“You’re seventeen.  They’ll throw you out.”

“Like you care.  You sold to kids for years.  The only reason I knew you were there was because I heard some people talking.”

“Yeah, I’m in no position to moralize, and neither are you,  _ mass murderer.” _  Sally smirks, and Tate’s eyes darken with anger momentarily before he walks in.

“Come on.  For that you’re buying me a drink.”

“Oh fuck you,” Sally grumbles, going after him.  Well, what the hell? She’s got money--swiped it from a room on the second floor--and she’s so goddamn  _ lonely.   _ Might as well talk with him for a bit, catch up on what’s happened since they both got knocked off.

She buys the drinks, and they sit at a table tucked into a cramped corner.  “So,” she says. “How’s life after life?”

“It’s fucking shitty.  I thought I found someone, but I was wrong.  She won’t even talk to me.”

Sally leans forward, her heart twisting in sympathy.  “Tell me more.”

“This family moved in seven years ago, a couple and their daughter.  They died, they’re stuck there now too--I’m not getting into it. The girl, Violet, she didn’t know I was dead.  She just thought I was another one of her dad’s patients. I fell in love; fuck, I didn’t even know what I was feeling, I fell so hard.  She loved me too; I  _ knew  _ it.  We were so happy, and then--even when she found out about the school and the dead thing she stayed.  But then she found out what I did to her mom, and that was it. She just disappears every time I try to talk to her.”

“What’d you do to her mom?”

“I helped kill her.  I made her sick and she died.  I didn’t see what was so wrong; Violet died too, they’re all so fucking happy together anyway.  I helped them. But she hates me. I’ve been waiting for the last seven years.” Tate chokes on the last words, and even in the dark she can tell there are tears in his eyes.

“I’m waiting too,” Sally says, placing a hand over his.  “I met a guy. He came in after his son disappeared, complete mess.  He wanted me, so I did everything he wanted. I let him take out every single fucking bit of misery on me.  Shit, I’m so stupid,” she laughs, feeling more tears run down her cheeks. “I fell in love, just like you. I still love him.  John’s there and he won’t listen, and it’s fucking torture watching him disappear the second he sees me. I’m so tired of waiting.  I want  _ him.   _ But if I loved him, I’d let him be, wouldn’t I?  There’s my catch-twenty-two.”

“No, I know.”  Tears are streaming down Tate’s face now.  “If I let her be, she can’t hate me more. But if I don’t, maybe I can get her to listen.  I don’t know. Fuck, I don’t know anymore. Sometimes I just wanna pass on to wherever it is we’re supposed to go.  I’m fucking dead and I still have a death wish.”

“What’s after this?  Nothingness? Emptiness?  I’m scared of that. I don’t wanna be completely alone.”

“Yeah, there’s that.  At least we’re lonely together here.”  Tate laughs hollowly. “There’s no way out, is there?  Either way we’re miserable.”

“Might as well get blasted and forget we go back at sunrise,” Sally suggests.  “I have the money.” She pauses. “Or do you wanna fuck instead?”

“Don’t know, don’t care.  Just get me another drink.”

Her eyes smart at his callousness, but then she remembers he’s just as needy as she is, and he’ll come around to it in about four drinks.  They both need to forget tonight. 

She gets a second round, and another, and before she knows it they’re both drunker than they’ve ever been, in life or death.  Tate’s face swims in out of focus, and suddenly they’re both cackling at something. What is it? Why’s it funny? Whatever. It feels good to actually laugh, for real.  She can’t remember the last time she laughed at something without being sarcastic.

“Come  _ oooonnnn,”  _ she slurs in Tate’s ear.  “Let’s get outta here. There’s… there’s too many fucking people.”

“Yeah… give me a hand?”  She stands, balancing herself with one hand on the table, and extends the other to him.  He grabs it and she almost knocks into him, which sets off another round of cackling.

“Hey!” a man grumbles from a nearby table.  “Shut up!”

“Fuck you, we’re leaving!” Tate screams as Sally drags him to the door and outside into the night.  They stumble into an alley, their shrieking laughter subsiding. 

“You wanna scare some kids?”  

“Fuck yeah.”  He grins darkly, and she counters by showing him a smile dripping scarlet with blood.  “Holy shit. Where’d you learn that?”

“You don’t know?  We can do anything.  It comes back when we want.”

“Like this?”  He closes his eyes and reopens them, and there are two deep, gaping black pits staring out from where they should be.  She laughs.

“Yeah, like that!  Come on.” His eyes flicker back into existence, and she takes him by the hand.  They walk through downtown, into a more residential area, where children run up and down the streets in bright costumes and cardboard masks.  Their parents hurry after, calling for them to slow down and not eat too much candy now, or they’ll get stomach aches.

“Watch this,” Sally says.  She taps a little boy in a sheriff costume on the shoulder, and when he turns around, her tongue slides out of her mouth in a heap, purplish, grotesque, and much longer than a tongue has any right to be.  He screams and runs back to his father, hiding in his coat, much to his father’s confusion. Sally looks back to Tate and he’s talking to a group of teenage girls dressed as witches. Flirting with them, really.  She knows that lean-over, she’s done it a million times herself. 

_ “WHAT THE FUCK?!”  _ one of the girls screeches suddenly, and there’s a soft clatter as Tate’s eyes roll out of his head and land on the ground.  Blood gushes forth from his sockets in bright red rivers, dripping down his chin and fingers. He extends one blood-stained hand to the the girl who screamed first, as if proposing a dance, and the girl steps back, her eyes stretched painfully wide, the whites bright against her dark eyeshadow.  Shrieking, she grabs her friends’ hands and they take off down the block, shoving through groups of kids and parents. People glance around for the source of fear, but Tate’s eyes have reappeared, and there’s nary a trace of blood anywhere. Sally pulls him around the corner and they fall against a wide tree, laughing harder than they’ve laughed in a long time.

_ “Goddamn!”  _ Sally cries, wiping tears from her eyes, tears that, for once, aren’t because she’s been abandoned again.  “You,” she says, jabbing a finger into Tate’s chest, “are a fucking genius! Where’d you think of that?”

“I’ve seen a lot of crazy shit,” Tate says, grinning wider than Gwynplaine.  “Come on. What else you got?”

“This.”  Sally grinds her teeth against each other, feeling them crack and crumble into the grass.  Blood runs down her chin, and he snorts with delighted laughter. 

“Oh fuck, that’s perfect.  I miss this.”

“Miss what?”

“You know.  Feeling like I have some worth.  Some power in my life… death, whatever.  Stuck in that house, there’s nothing to do.  The others like to keep buyers away; I don’t have anyone to fuck with.  Violet won’t talk to me, no matter how much I ask. I feel like nothing there.  Out here, people see me. I can scare them; I have something over them. I don’t have anything like that at home.”  He laughs bitterly. “Fuck.  _ Home.   _ I hate that house, but it’s still home.  There’s nowhere else to go.”

“You wanna know who I am at the hotel?” Sally asks.  “The whore with the China white. People come in, they use me, and they throw me out like I’m nothing.  You’re right about out here. I’m powerful. People think I’m someone who matters, even if it’s a monster.  But I’d rather be a monster than nothing at all.”

“Me too.”  Tate moves closer, until they’re sitting side by side.  He reaches for her hand, and she twines her fingers through his.  “Fuck it all, you know? We’ve got nothing but time and no one to love us.  Might as well fuck shit up.”

Sally nods, an idea forming in her mind.  She takes out her phone. “Get closer to me.  We’re taking a picture.”

“You have a cellular phone?”

“Yeah, they’re common now.  You can take pictures with them, like this.”  She shows him the camera and raises the phone high above their heads.  “Get in here.”

He rolls his eyes, but gets in there, pressing against her.  “Smile,” she says, and he counters by working his mouth into a straight line.

“No.”

“Smile, asshole, or I’ll tear your face off and I’ll make it hurt real bad.”

_ “Ugh,  _ fine.”  He flips her off but smiles anyway, leaning his head against hers.  She closes her eyes for a minute, losing herself in the feeling of someone holding her, even if his touch is as cold as she is.  She raises the phone a little higher, getting them them both in frame, and presses the button.

The phone makes a clicking sound, the flash goes off, and for only a second, they’re not ghosts, lingering in tears and regret.  They’re two strangers on Halloween, having as good a time as they can. For only a second, they forget.

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, Tate is lying about what he did to Vivien. Why? He's looking for sympathy, and he doesn't seem like the type of person to brag about raping someone. For the same reason, Sally doesn't mention trying to kill John. The way I see it, they think they're better people than they really are.


End file.
